Blinding Light by Paul Theroux Read Free Book Online Page A

room. Fearful of hurting himself, Steadman got down on all fours and crept toward the sound of her voice, though she went on teasing him. Over here, she said. No, over here. Until he cornered her and took hold of her and kissed her and pressed his face against her softness, sensing her vividly as an odor and a warmth in the darkness of his blindfold. As they kissed, this darkness lifted and became smoldering light. But the act itself came much later, for they struggled, choking in a hallucination of desire, teasing, delaying, relenting, beginning again, two strangers becoming acquaintances, uttering the desperate half-laugh of lust.
    The act was not about possessing her but about letting go, each of them doing so in the most private way, as though practicing this release. And they took turns, each one both a suggestion and a dare, as if in using only their lips and their tongues they were saying with mute eloquence, This is what I want.
    Later, Steadman was the first to wake, but taking off his blindfold made little difference, for night had fallen. He saw a slash of meager brightness, the dim lights of the city through the curtain. Ava lay asleep, still blindfolded, sprawled between two chairs, embracing herself for warmth. She looked tossed there, her lips parted, her tongue showing, like a cat that has been hit by a car.
    He too was lying naked on the floor. There was also a crack of corridor light showing in the threshold, enough light so that Steadman saw that a folded paper, probably a note, had been thrust under the door.

4
    B EING WOKEN before dawn was like an intimation of sickness, a set of symptoms: the tremulous fragility of early morning in the high distant city, sniffing the thin, sharpened air in the dim fluorescence of the uncertain light, the rank dust, the muffled voices and humming stillness, his clamped head and crusted eyes. He was reminded that he had said something like this in
Trespassing
about this very place.
    Steadman hated early starts, and downstairs he was jarred by Nestor’s heartiness.
    â€œReady to rumble?”
    When people like this knew American catch phrases, Steadman suspected them of trying to hustle him. Why else would a stranger take such trouble to ingratiate himself? Besides, their knowing such inanities proved that they had habitually associated with shallow boisterous Americans and knew no better.
    Ava, used to a doctor’s emergencies, was already up and dressed and lucid.
    Nestor was a big confident man, no more than forty, with a beaky face and a mustache and deep-set dark eyes. He wore a heavy leather jacket, which Steadman remarked on. Nestor instantly seemed to know what Steadman was intimating and said, “You won’t need it where we are going.”
    Instead of being reassured by Nestor’s excellent English, Steadman was suspicious of his presumption. The man was clearly experienced, but he was impulsive in his movements, even in the way he walked—lunging—and so confident as to be carelessly clumsy.
    Five other shadow-shrouded people sat in the back of the van, faceless in the darkness, hunched over in the chill of the early morning. A cassette of Andean flute and panpipe music was whistling in the van’s tape player. They said nothing when Steadman and Ava got into the forward seat. They remained silent—Steadman guessed that they resented having to pick up him and Ava last, giving them more time to sleep. Waiting for them in the porte-cochere of the luxury hotel perhaps annoyed them, too.
    â€œSix hours to Papallacta,” Nestor said. “And then Lago Agrio. We stay in Lago tonight. We will be on the river in the morning. Tomorrow afternoon in the jungle. Anyone mind if I smoke a cigarette?”
    â€œWe mind,” came a voice from a back seat, a woman’s voice, like bolt cutters snapping through iron.
    Nestor shrugged and unwrapped some chewing gum. He sat next to the driver, whom he announced as Hernán. Hernán